


Nickel Milkshakes

by ProwlingThunder



Series: 100+ Words [40]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Man Out of Time, Milkshakes, Timetravel the slow way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22813021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Nick wants a diner. The Dugout doesn't count; it's closer to a bar.
Series: 100+ Words [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/748548
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: The Sun in a Jar





	Nickel Milkshakes

There used to be diners. Polished things, red and white checkers, wallpaper announcing milkshakes for a nickel, glass of root beer for two cents.

Nick remembers them through memories not his own, but they're still his memories. He can still remember the taste of them on his tongue, the cold of the glass against his fingers, beads of water tracing designs down the outside of the shape, leaving behind rings on the wood.

It's all ancient memories now, of course. The shock of waking up in the new world without all the things he'd been familiar with had been so much more than the first time a casing cracked; the loss of _everything_ was... was more. Meant more.

Some days, when he's feeling painfully nostalgic, Nick wonders whether or not he thought about that before he let the Institute photocopy his brain. Probably not. In a number of ways, that time was so much _simpler._

Not that he's considering anything simple, these days. Or familiar. At least, not anything on the outside of a vault. And he hears the rumor of survivors climbing out of one, frozen for two hundred years, and he hates the way his first thought is, _well, they found the easy way._

There should be a diner he could take them to. Something they deserved just the same as him, a piece of the old world that had left the three of them behind. But there isn't, and that's just a crying shame.

He doesn't have much use for decorations. The amount of crazy twitching the shopkeeps do when he goes shopping means he gets only the necessities, and none of it is ancient-diner supply. They built an entire city on a ball field, and neglected one of the best pieces of social commentary they had ever seen. The Dugout doesn't count; it's closer to a bar. 

Nick wants a diner. With donuts, and milkshakes, and root beer floats.


End file.
